Saturday, November 29, 2014

(First published in The Dominion Post on November28, though
you won’t find it on the paper’s website.)

Initial reaction to Andrew
Little’s election as Labour Party leader was mostly dismissive.

Critics pointed out that he
couldn’t win his home town seat of New Plymouth and was lucky to squeak back
into Parliament at all. They also made much of the fact that Little won the
leadership contest by the narrowest of margins and wasn’t the choice of his
fellow MPs.

We were repeatedly reminded
that without union support, Little’s bid would have failed – choice propaganda
material for the Right, given older New Zealanders’ memories of the damage done
by militant trade unionism in the 1970s and 80s.

Then there were the jibes
about Little being dour and humourless – a bit harsh, I thought, given that the
entire leadership contest was a personality-free zone.

But while all of these
criticisms were valid, it doesn’t necessarily follow that Labour under Little is
doomed to continue its slide into self-destruction and irrelevancy.

My view is that even if he
was elected by the skin of his teeth under a flawed process that gives too much
power to the unions, Labour ended up with the right leader.

True, he’s not exactly
charismatic, but neither was Helen Clark when she became Labour leader. She
went on to win three terms.

I first met Little when he
led the university students’ association in the late 1980s. I’ve had occasional
dealings with him since then and found him personable, direct and straight.

Those last two qualities in
particular are worth noting. Little doesn’t strike me as a man who seeks to
ingratiate himself with people by saying whatever he thinks his audience might
want to hear.

That sets him apart from his
predecessor, David Cunliffe, and I suspect from Grant Robertson too.

Cunliffe was notable for
talking tough in left-wing forums but then modifying his stance immediately
afterwards.He also brought ridicule on
himself for apologising to a women’s refuge audience for being a man.

As for Robertson, he always
seemed just a bit too keen to portray himself as one of the boys – a Kiwi bloke
who liked nothing more than a night at the pub watching the footy. I suspect
this was an over-reaction to the perception that people might be biased against
him because he was gay.

Politicians often don’t seem
to realise how transparent and calculating they look, but Little comes across
as authentic.

He comes from an unusual
background. His father, a former British Army major, was a National Party
stalwart who wrote trenchant letters to the papers, often on Middle East
issues.

Major Little had served in
the Middle East and was strongly pro-Palestinian – an unusual position for a
National Party man. The younger Little may have inherited some of his father’s
spirit even though they weren’t politically compatible.

Despite his union background,
he’s no ideologue. He’s grounded in the real world and can speak the language
of business people.I would suggest that
of the four leadership contenders, he was by far the best placed to appeal to
the centre ground.

He has made a good start with
a series of confident media performances, which wouldn’t surprise those who
know him, and a combative stance in the House.His biggest challenge may not be reaching out to the country, but
winning the support of ideologues in his faction-ridden party.

A factor in Little’s favour
is that his mix of university education and union experiencemakes him ideally placed to bridge the gap
between the disparate wings of the party – the latte-drinking, liberal
inner-city dwellers on the one hand and the traditional blue-collar support
base on the other.

The natural electoral cycle
may work in his favour too. National governments are never less attractive than
when they assume the triumphalist, born-to-rule manner that sometimes comes
with third terms.

Besides, by 2017 New
Zealanders may decide it’s time the balance was tipped back in favour of
working people. Only last week, statistics confirmed that while the economy
continues to grow and business profits keep rising, employees are enjoying only
a small share of the gains.

This is a fair-minded
country, and it goes against the grain that corporate salaries have risen to
grotesque levels while wage earners struggle to keep up with the cost of living.

The balance of power in the
labour market has shifted radically. The trade union tyranny which New Zealand
experienced a generation ago is no longer the risk. A much bigger problem now
is corporate tyranny and arrogance.

It follows that the prospect
of a Little-led Labour government may not be quite as far-fetched as it first
seems.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

I’VE RECENTLY been reading a book by the English journalist
A A Gill. The Golden Door is a book
about America – a country that fascinates Gill, and in which he finds much to
like.

Gill’s observations about immigration particularly resonated
with me. Writing about the great wave of humanity that left Europe for America
in the 19th century, he cites some striking statistics.

Between 1800 and 1914, 30 million Europeans emigrated to the
New World. If that doesn’t sound a big number, consider it in this context:
Ireland lost one in four of its population, Sweden one in five. Five million
Poles, four million Italians and three million Germans crossed the Atlantic.

As Gill points out, “all entrances on one stage are exits
elsewhere”. While we tend to think of migration to America in terms of what
that country gained, Gill reminds us that it represented an enormous human loss
for Europe. Every departure was “a farewell, a sadness, a defeat”. The Irish
would hold wakes so that they could mourn those leaving.

He writes movingly of the “gut-wrenching finality of
separation”. Those departing would hug their mothers, drink a toast with
friends, take a last look at the old house, pat the family dog, and leave. Very
few would ever return.

Gill reminds us too that the people who left were usually
the ones who could be spared least. “Like a biblical curse, the biblical land
called the young and the strong from Europe: the adventurous, the clever and
the skilled.”

There are clear parallels here with the New Zealand
experience, because ours is an immigrant society too. We can’t be sure what motivated
the Polynesian voyagers who first settled New Zealand; some suggest
overcrowding on their home islands, depletion of food resources or warfare.

Others theorise that they may simply have been driven by an adventurous
urge to discover and colonise new lands. But whatever the explanation, they
were obviously looking for something better – and perhaps they too were the
young and the strong, the risk-takers.

My own forebears were certainly not prepared to accept the
status quo in the countries of their birth. On my mother’s side they were Irish
Catholics, economically disadvantaged and politically powerless. On my father’s
side, they were getting out of a country (Denmark) that had recently been
invaded by the Prussian army.

Life in Europe held even less promise for my wife’s family.
Her parents were forcibly transported from occupied Poland to Germany during
the Second World War and put to work in an arms factory. At the war’s end there
was nothing to go back to; their families had been wiped out and Poland had
effectively been taken over by Stalin’s repressive Soviet Union. It took 20
years for them to find their way to a safe haven in New Zealand.

Every New Zealand family has its own immigration story to
tell, but in every case someone made the risky decision to leave behind the
known and familiar and take a chance on the other side of the world. It’s equally
true of the many immigrants now arriving from Asia.

But what occurred to me, reading Gill’s book, is that in
recent decades the pattern has also reversed itself.

New Zealand has experienced its own exodus. Just as our
forebears left Europe for a better life and new opportunities, so, ironically,
large numbers of our own children have left New Zealand for much the same
reason.

Members of my generation have had to resign themselves to
the likelihood that their offspring will end up making their future in another
country. Even more ironically, many have gone back to the country their
ancestors abandoned: Britain.

There are echoes here of the 19th century
experience in countries like Ireland. We too have lost many of our youngest and
most talented. The crucial difference is that, thanks to cheap international
air fares, we are spared the unimaginably painful experience of saying goodbye
knowing we’ll probably never see them again.

My own situation is not unusual. Of our four children, three
live overseas: two in Australia and one in California. Only two of our six
grandchildren are growing up as New Zealanders. Many of my nieces and nephews,
too, find life elsewhere more rewarding.

Will they eventually come back? We can only hope so.

When the subject comes up in conversation with my kids,
certain themes emerge. Whatever attachment they feel to the country of their
birth, life is economically more rewarding for them elsewhere and the
opportunities are greater.

It’s an uncomfortable truth that New Zealand is a low-wage
country. My children say they could possibly live with that, but what they
can’t accept is the severe disjunction between wages and the cost of living
here.

Alas, getting living expenses into line with wages, or
vice-versa, is a challenge that seems to be beyond us.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

The world is in the grip of an epidemic of infantilism. How
else can anyone account for tour parties travelling around the world to gasp in
awe at the Weta Cave or the newly unveiled model of Smaug the dragon at
Wellington Airport?

We’re told that Hobbit pilgrims from overseas burst into
tears on arriving at Hobbiton. Perhaps someone should have gently explained
that it wasn’t really where Bilbo Baggins lived. It was a farm in the Waikato.

It reminded me of the time I was driving over Haywards Hill
and noticed a group of people standing beside a tourist bus gazing misty-eyed
at the hillside quarry where the Helm’s Deep battle sequence was filmed for Sir
Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings
trilogy.

I felt like shouting, “It’s just a bloody quarry, for God’s
sake”, but I probably would have risked arrest. Given the national reverence
for Jackson and the contribution his fantasy epics have made to the country’s
GDP, there could well be laws prohibiting such heresy.

Thirty years ago I read The
Hobbit for my children. They were enthralled, but the story struck me as
rather slight – certainly compared with The
Lord of the Rings.

How Jackson could stretch it into three films, with a cumulative
length of nearly eight hours, almost defies belief. I can only assume each film
in the trilogy is padded out by the same interminable battle scenes that, to
me, made the Lord of the Rings films
indistinguishable from each other.

Interchangeable sequences seem to be a common feature of
fantasy films. I’ve tried to watch several of the Harry Potter movies on
television, but after the first 30 minutes or so I can never tell which one it
is. They all ultimately morph into one super-long, generic Harry Potter film in which
the plots and mumbo-jumbo dialogue (another feature in common with the Lord of the Rings movies) hardly seem to
vary.

Now here’s the question. Why, at a point in history when
people are arguably better-educated than ever before, and therefore presumably
less susceptible to myth and superstition, has Western civilisation produced a
generation so seduced by make-believe?

It’s not just The
Hobbit and Harry Potter. Look at
the international media frenzy over the announcement that a new Star Wars instalment is imminent. You
can be sure this news was trending big-time on Twitter, which is now the ultimate
measurement of how important anything is.

Look at the excited reaction by film critics when a new
Spider-Man or Batman movie hits the screens. These escapist trifles are treated
as if they were as profound as something by Shakespeare or Tolstoy.

Look at the phenomenal success of 2009’s Avatar – surely one of the silliest
films ever made – and the hype surrounding the promised release of a sequel in
2016.

Look at the tens of thousands of people who attend sci-fi and
fantasy conventions such as San Diego’s famous Comi-Con, where they dress up as
Darth Vader or Dumbledore and queue patiently for a glimpse of people called
actors, who are revered for pretending to be someone else.

What’s going on here? My Oxford dictionary gives a clue. It
defines infantilism as childish behaviour or the persistence of infantile
characteristics or behaviour in adult life. Think The Big Bang Theory, which gently satirises four highly educated men
who refuse to grow up.

That definition seems, to me, a pretty good description of
the Hobbit fan syndrome. But it only gets us halfway toward understanding the
phenomenon, because putting a word to it doesn’t really explain how or why it
happens.

What’s clear is that the so-called millennial generation –
which means, roughly, those born after 1980 – includes a large cohort that is affluent,
easily bored and eager for new sources of distraction and gratification.

They seem to find it in escapist fantasy. This is harmless
enough, except that the line between fantasy and reality has a tendency to
become blurred – witness the Hobbit fans who shed tears of ecstatic joy at
being shown a farm near Matamata.

Here’s one possible explanation. There is ample research to
support the theory that humanity is hard-wired to believe in something bigger
than ourselves. Conventional religious belief has largely fallen out of favour;
we’re too sophisticated and sceptical for that. But perhaps the need to believe
remains.

Friday, November 7, 2014

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, November 5.)

If you had to name the vital principles underpinning our
civilised, democratic society, what would they be?

One would surely be the rule of law, which provides a framework
by which injustices are dealt with, disputes resolved and the weak protected
against the powerful.

Respect for the rule of law is one of the factors that
distinguishes liberal democracies from countries where despots rule, and where
justice, if it exists at all, is administered very selectively.

It follows that without the rule of law, society would
unravel. Yet a determined challenge to the rule of law in New Zealand has been
allowed to continue unchecked for seven years.

The country has watched with mounting dismay and incredulity
as the Bay of Plenty whanau of the late James Takamore has repeatedly defied
court orders to allow the exhumation of his body and its return to
Christchurch, from where it was taken in 2007.

First the High Court, then the Court of Appeal and finally
the Supreme Court all decreed that the wishes of Takamore’s Paheka partner and
children should prevail over those of his whanau.

It’s clear that Takamore himself wished to be buried in
Christchurch. But when an attempt was made in August to disinter his body from
the whanau urupa near Opotiki, police and funeral directors were blocked by an
intimidating group of Maori protesters. Rather than risk violence, they
retreated.

At that moment, the goddess of justice must have let out a
quiet sigh of despair.

In this case, the whanau have placed themselves above the
law. They have used a cultural pretext, the sanctity of Maori custom, as an
excuse to defy the courts and bully a grieving family. And a timid Crown
appears to have no answer to their arrogance.

A High Court judge who has tried to mediate, apparently in
the vain hope that sweet reason would succeed where court orders failed, has
given up and passed the parcel – an embarrassing, much-handled parcel that no
one wants – to the Solicitor-General.

No one will be holding their breath in the expectation of a
sudden breakthrough. After all, why would the whanau capitulate now, when they
have succeeded in repeatedly making a mockery of the legal system and proving
its impotence?

Effectively, we seem to be back to square one. The
scandalous procrastination continues.

The whanau claims good reason for doing what it did. After
Takamore’s death members of the whanau travelled to Christchurch where they
reportedly found his body lying unattended in the funeral home. The Tuhoe people
regard this as an egregious breach of tikanga (custom) and a slight to the dead
person.

I’ve also seen it argued (by a Pakeha) that Takamore
deserves to lie among his own people, where his remains will be honoured and
cared for.

I understand that argument up to a point, but it assumes he
would have been neglected and forgotten had he remained in Christchurch. That’s
an insult to his widow and children.

In any case, all that is irrelevant. We have a judicial
system that has evolved over hundreds of years to determine a just and fair outcome
in complex situations such as this. It’s not perfect, but it gets things right
most of the time.

Maori as well as Pakeha are protected under this system. Maori
accepted British law when they signed the Treaty (in fact asked for it, because
of the problems caused by unruly colonists) and have become adept at using it
to their advantage.

But the law is not a game of pick-and-choose. The system
depends on people accepting the decisions of the courts whichever way they
fall. Maori cannot embrace the judicial system when it works in their favour and
disregard it if they think their tikanga takes precedence.

It hardly needs saying that the rule of law is imperilled when
people see a renegade group brazenly defying the highest court in the land and
getting away with it. What’s to stop other disaffected litigants deciding to
have a go?

There’s surely a simple, if unpleasant, solution. It’s
ultimately the job of the police to enforce the law. Instead of timidly
tip-toeing around the issue in the interests of cultural sensitivity, the
police should guarantee sufficient force to protect those wanting to exhume the
body. Anyone who interferes should be arrested for breach of the peace and
contempt of court.

I’m sure that if a motorcycle gang defied the law from
behind the walls of its fortified headquarters, the police would call in a
bulldozer. It’s happened before. But it seems a different set of rules apply on
the Kutarere Marae.

For every day that Takamore’s whanau are allowed to go on
defying the courts, the rule of law is weakened. And James Takamore’s immediate
family is left to ponder its apparent powerlessness.

I wonder when someone in authority – a judge, a politician,
the police commissioner, anyone – will eventually muster the moral courage to
call the Takamore whanau’s bluff.

Saturday, November 1, 2014

I ALWAYS make a point of reading Mike O’Donnell’s contributions in the Saturday
business pages of the Dominion Post.
He’s an entertaining columnist who shatters the peculiar conceit that the only
people capable of writing well are those who do it for a living.

He’s smart, witty, perceptive and well-informed. You can see
why he’s highly regarded in the business and digital technology worlds where he
made his name.

Even more appealing is that he seems an unpretentious bloke with
an enthusiasm for cars, motorbikes and shooting, which makes his columns all
the more readable.

Until earlier this year, O’Donnell was the chief operating
officer for TradeMe. He now heads a new $5.3 million project set up to market
New Zealand public sector intellectual property to other governments.

I translate that as meaning, in essence, that his job is to
persuade other countries to pay for the right to copy clever ways of doing
things that have been pioneered by our public sector – a position for which he
seems admirably suited.

Given my respect for him, you can probably understand my
reluctance to challenge him, least of all on an issue where he’s regarded as an
authority. But I balked at his column last Saturday in which he speculated
about the impact of social media on journalism.

O’Donnell suggests that by the time of the next general
election, social media may have rendered the evening television news bulletin
extinct. His theory seems to be that consumers of news (a ghastly phrase) will
no longer be prepared to wait until 6pm for their fix, but will update
themselves constantly throughout the day by accessing news on their smartphones
and tablets.

People have the capability to do that now. But do the vast
number who still get their news from newspapers, TV and radio really have such
a voracious appetite for information that in future they will demand it in (to
use another ghastly phrase) “real time”?

I somehow doubt it, and I wonder whether people like
O’Donnell have been misled by their own enthusiasm for the digital revolution
and their missionary desire to promote its assumed benefits.

O’Donnell is certainly correct when he says that digital
media – Twitter, Facebook, the blogosphere and online news services such as
Stuff – have changed the way journalists operate.

Reporters no longer write only to fill the morning paper or
the 6 pm bulletin; they’re constantly updating stories or breaking news online.
Competition to be first is more intense than ever. But in a sense, it’s
artificial competition.

There may be prestige and status to be gained (and bosses to
be impressed) by being the first journalist to break a story on Twitter, but
does it really matter to anyone besides other journalists, politicians and a
minority of tragic news junkies?

Again, I doubt it. Once something has happened, it’s
happened – and I suspect that to most people, it doesn’t really matter whether
they learn of it instantaneously or wait for tonight’s TV bulletin or tomorrow
morning’s Dom Post.

Not everyone is so obsessed with politics or news in general
that they feel compelled to constantly check Twitter, Stuff or Cameron Slater’s
latest blog post.

People who are so
obsessed – and O’Donnell may or may not be one of them – could easily fall into
the trap of assuming that everyone else is, too. But most people I know, and
they represent a reasonably wide demographic cross-section, seem to have a
healthy grip on life’s priorities and manage perfectly well without getting
hung up on Twitter or any other online news outlet.

If they are on Twitter at all (and I know few people who
are, or at least who are prepared to admit it), then it takes its place along with
all the other things going on their lives. It doesn’t occupy their every waking
thought.

And thank God for that, because what sort of world would it
be if police officers, bus drivers, construction workers, shop assistants,
schoolteachers, forestry workers, nurses, farmers and plumbers constantly
interrupted whatever they were doing to look at their digital devices for fear
they might have missed something?

Call me a Luddite, but I think it still suits a lot of
people to get their news from the 6 pm bulletin, the morning paper or Radio New
Zealand’s Morning Report. Trouble is,
the noise from those predicting the end of the traditional media often drowns
out everyone else.

About Me

I am a freelance journalist and columnist living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. In the presence of Greenies I like to boast that I walk to work each day - I've paced it out and it's about 15 metres. I write about all sorts of stuff: politics, the media, music, wine, films, cycling and anything else that piques my interest - even sport, though I admit I don't have the intuitive understanding of sport that most New Zealand males absorb as if by osmosis. I'm a former musician (bass and guitar) with a lifelong love of music that led me to write my book 'A Road Tour of American Song Titles: From Mendocino to Memphis', published by Bateman NZ in July 2016. I've been in journalism for more than 40 years and like many journalists I know a little bit about a lot of things and probably not enough about anything. I have never won any journalism awards.